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Microsoft's Palladium and the "Fritz Chip"
Kicka$$gear-News (computer enthusiast site) ^ | June 28, 2002 | Dr. John

Posted on 06/28/2002 8:09:49 AM PDT by RicocheT

Palladium and the "Fritz Chip"

You all should know about Senator Fritz Hollings, and his tireless attempts to make PCs incapable of copying music files or running "unauthorized content". The Trusted Computing Platform Alliance" or TCPA, is a hardware and software based system for preventing computers from doing many of the things they are now capable of. Microsoft, AMD, Intel and many other companies say they are now working very hard to integrate TCPA features into hardware and software, including future versions of Windows.

At the heart of TCPA is a new chip added to motherboards, which have been affectionately dubbed "Fritz chips" after the good Senator. But there is a double meaning here, since you can expect computers based on TCPA technology to go on the fritz far more often than their non-TCPA counterparts. Eventually, Intel and AMD say they will incorporate TCPA into future processors. Lucky us.

Palladium is the software end of the business, and will be built-into future versions of Windows. The basic idea is that the Fritz chip will constantly check the machine state, and the "authorizations" for the OS and each application on the machine. The OS will only boot if nothing is "amiss", that means no "unauthorized components or content". The spin they are putting on this draconian move is that "PCs won't necessarily get faster, just more secure".

Is that what computer owners want? Slower computers that can't copy MP3 files without paid authorization? I don't think so, and I doubt that talk about "secure computing" will change many minds. So the question is, will folks run out to buy a "Fritz chip" computer, or will they shop around for Fritz-less options? My guess is the later. However, most computer users are far from techno-savvy, so if they get bombarded with propaganda about TCPA making their computers secure from hackers, maybe the IT industry will be able to bamboozle large numbers of casual computer users. But the relatively smaller community of power users will certainly not go quietly into this good fight. So the next question is, will there be "Fritz-less" computer manufacturers that specifically sell only systems that have no TCPA components or operating systems? What will become of Linux as Microsoft moves completely to "Palladium", especially if the internet becomes TCPA-ified?

The bottom line is this. Computer and software makers are desperate to lock down the ability of modern computers until they are nothing more than paid content providing systems. This is not what computers were made for, they were made to be multifunctional, programmable devices with almost unlimited capabilities. Capabilities that the MPAA (motion picture assoc. of America) and RIAA (recording industry assoc. of America) want eliminated ASAP.

Finally, will TCPA create a black market for Fritz-less motherboards, or will it just make the last, fastest, Fritz-less computers the most popular on earth? I can imagine a big run on the last round on non-TCPA hardware as soon as it becomes known that all motherboards after a certain date must have the Fritz chip installed.

Dr. John

See this article for the technical explanation: "MS Palladium protects IT vendors, not you" http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25940.html


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Technical
KEYWORDS: microsoft; mpaa; palladium; riaa
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To: dheretic
Quoting rules aren't part of public domain. That's part of fair use. I can quote, up to a reasonable percentage of the original material, anything, copywriten or not. I only have to get permission if I want to use a significant portion of the material. Governmental documents (like the Constitution) are on a different set of rules. The classics and the Bible actully are copyrighted when republished, again the rules are different, though not as different when the item in question has been translated (because of the wiggle room translations give you can copyright your translation of something, you see this with The Art of War always seems two or three people are working on a new translation and publish around the same time), with things that don't have to be translated it's generally the formating or related content (thus why everybody's edition of Mark Twain has some forward).
121 posted on 06/29/2002 8:26:42 AM PDT by discostu
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To: dheretic
Great, that's what redirectors are for, or borrowing public computers. It's not hard to obscure your IP address, I'd be surprised to find out most of the uploaders on the big sites weren't already doing this.
122 posted on 06/29/2002 8:29:13 AM PDT by discostu
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To: discostu
"If you give it to others that's bootlegging, that's a problem."

Bzzzt. Wrong. I burn a CD, I give it to you without taking money, and I am within the Betamax decision's definition of fair use. Simply lending it is even more within bounds.

Now ask yourself: Why is this fair use? One of the reasons is that any means to stop it is simply too intrusive and unenforceable.

123 posted on 06/29/2002 10:31:09 AM PDT by eno_
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To: Kevin Curry
Actually that's part of the problem: the continuing exapnsion of thought-crime laws. If I know how to crack an electronic lock, shoudl you come and sieze that part of my brain for being a "burglarious tool?"

Or how about FR's server logs? They probably have enough record of government shills like you that if someone were to crack FR and take them they could track you down. Better shut down FR before that happens!

124 posted on 06/29/2002 10:34:48 AM PDT by eno_
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To: RicocheT
To answer the question posed by the thread's title, we may very well be doomed to become a nanny state, but one with police state overtones. If so, tantrum-throwing pro-dope/pro-porn/pro-gay/anti-God libertarians and their social allies, the liberals, will speed us to that end-state.

I will continue to resist that end-state, and will enjoy my freedom for as long as I can.

125 posted on 06/29/2002 10:47:16 AM PDT by Kevin Curry
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To: Kevin Curry
pro-dope/pro-porn/pro-gay/anti-God libertarians

You wouldn't know the difference between principled objections to arbitrary restraints on individual rights and a libertine desire to legalize something from personal desire to partake of it.

126 posted on 06/29/2002 11:02:48 AM PDT by dheretic
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To: Kevin Curry
IOW, "Concern for your personal possessions does not grant you the right to take away MY lock-pick for fear that I might let myself in your front door and steal you blind."

The only reason why you want a car capable of doing more than 55mph is because you want to speed.

Kevin, how much do you know about software and hardware development? If you don't, then shut up. You have no idea what you're talking about.

IF YOU THINK THIS CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED WITHOUT IRREPARABLY DESTROYING THE WAY THAT A PERSONAL COMPUTER WORKS STFU NOW! YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO EXPERIENCE WRITING SOFTWARE OR BUILDING HARDWARE BECAUSE IF YOU DID YOU WOULD KNOW THAT THIS WOULD NEVER WORK!

127 posted on 06/29/2002 11:09:54 AM PDT by dheretic
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To: eno_
What's the bounds for how many people you can give it to before it becomes bootlegging?
128 posted on 06/29/2002 11:57:36 AM PDT by discostu
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To: discostu
I take it you didn't see Psycho Bunny's comment (Msg#72).

129 posted on 06/29/2002 12:25:27 PM PDT by steve-b
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To: dheretic
What would you expect from someone who is, in effect, asserting that the Doolittle Raid assisted Tojo's attempts to conquer the Western Pacific?

130 posted on 06/29/2002 12:29:51 PM PDT by steve-b
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To: discostu
That's a fuzzy boundary. Fair use is not codified. It is a doctrine. If I give music away to hundreds of people I don't know, without having a reason to do it, it may violate the law, and it is arguably tortious, too. But if I do not profit from my generosity, neither is it the traditional definition of "piracy" - which is usually a for-profit activity. This is the crux of the DRM controversy. Today's IP violations usually do not have a profit motive.

Piracy for profit is clearly out of bounds, and always should be. On that we can agree. It is also easier to find: If is generates big profits, there is a bank account somewhere that can be siezed.

Where we part ways is this: I find the security of my documents and the ability to operate a machine I own as I see fit more important than anyone else's ability to profit from IP in the face of not-for-profit sharing, especially if the only way to stop that sharing is to install Big Brother Inside, even if it means the end of the RIAA and it's constituents.

131 posted on 06/29/2002 3:14:45 PM PDT by eno_
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To: steve-b
Bugs happen. I've said over and over I don't like the solution, but I'm not going to pretend there's not a problem because of that.
132 posted on 06/29/2002 3:36:39 PM PDT by discostu
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To: eno_
That level of distrubtion is where things get hairy, made more so by the fact that the copier actually has very little control over how far and wide something goes, once he opens the door a crack who knows how far it can go.

I like control over my machine too. I think Fritz and Palladium suck. But again, just because the solution blows doesn't mean the problem it's addressing isn't genuine. If we can't come up with a better answer this is the answer that will be shoved down our throats.
133 posted on 06/29/2002 3:42:12 PM PDT by discostu
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To: discostu
'The difference is that everything you outlined was legal to start with. Bootlegging is illegal, has been for a very long time'

From what I know of legal history. It's never been illegal to make copies of music you own for self-use.
134 posted on 06/29/2002 4:12:13 PM PDT by Bogey78O
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To: discostu
If we can't come up with a better answer this is the answer that will be shoved down our throats.

No, many of us will go firmly into Apple's camp. Apple wouldn't dare implement something like this because it knows its core userbase would go berzerk. That's the advantage that we Mac users have, we have Apple by the balls to a degree that PC users could never have Dell, HPQ, Intel, etc. Without us, Apple is dead as a company. We are the users that went out and bought OSX 10.0 knowing it was actually 10-beta2 and 10.1 was the true "1.0" release of OSX. We are the users that opt for the more expensive hardware that is Apple's bread and butter. Simply put, Apple's core contingency is what has always kept it relatively safe and always will. Unless Apple is forced to by law, they will not implement something like Palladium because their core userbase would rip Jobs a new one.

Palladium is not the answer anymore than motion detector-enabled cameras are an answer to speeding problems. Palladium cannot and will not solve the issue of bootlegging. Have you been under a rock for the past 5-6 years? All it takes is for a team of gifted crackers to crack 1 copy of the restricted content and once it starts propagating it will be impossible to stop. The only way to stop that from happening would be to shut down the Internet because it cannot exist as both an open communications medium and be heavily regulated to protect the assets of certain industries. It is one way or another. You cannot have DRM and have the existing Internet and computer platforms coexist.

The fact of the matter is that the RIAA's losses are totally their own fault. Napster was only a symptom of a greater disease. The fact of the matter is that the major labels have the means to simultaneously cut the cost of their products by 50%, give every artist a 50% cut from the CD and still make several dollars in profit per CD, but they won't rock the boat. I won't entertain the thought of having any sympathy or any concern for the workers, executives and stockholders of these multinationals until they actually reform themselves. They have the means to produce all of their CDs inhouse and sell them directly online to customers for $10 including S&H. Rather than killing Napster they should have bought Napster and then use it as a front end for their eCommerce sites so that every search in Napster would let a Napster user buy the CD online directly from the label for $6-$8 before S&H.

Bootlegging is non-issue. Microsoft's products are the most heavily bootlegged IP in the world, both commercially and for personal use yet Microsoft is one of the wealthiest institutions on Earth. Microsoft disproves the **AA's argument that bootlegging kills market-oriented IP companies. Microsoft's products are never as bad as the majority of movies put out by Hollywood. Microsoft also learns its lessons very quickly after being hit the first time. The other major IP companies such as Universal-Vivendi, Sony, etc do not. Jack Valenti complained that only 2/10 of the movies put out are highly profitable. No $hit you jackass, most of them are not memorable and are cookie-cutter trash. Every other industry seems to understand that flooding the market with cheap trash is not good for the bottom line, the music and movie industries won't figure that out until after their own policies kill them off.

In the end I think the one company that will profit the most from this issue is Paypal. Eventually some big name artist is going to realize that a paypal account let's fans bootleg albums to their hearts' content and actually pay them directly. It will all be down hill from their for the financial vampires that make up the majority of the music industry.

135 posted on 06/29/2002 5:09:10 PM PDT by dheretic
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To: dheretic
Ah Apple the savior. Guess again. Apple is dead as a company with you. Their percentage of the market keeps dropping, the best way for them to get software to run on their system is to make their OS pretend to be everything. As for Jobs... who cares. He's a brilliant idea man and he's got less business than a bug. Notice Apple was stable at 7% until they brought back brilliant Stevie, now they're at 5.

Why do I keep hearing an echo in here. What have I been freaking saying YES PALLADIUM ISN'T THE ANSWER, NEITHER IS FRITZ, NEITHER WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM. But guess what, they're what's coming down the pipe. Not just from companies from probably from the law. Unless somebody comes up with a better answer.

As for the RIAA yes their problems are many and varied, but don't be silly and think they're artificially inflating the cost of production. These companies have been in this business for too long for that kind of stupidity. IMHO their big problem is that they fork over too much money up front to hot acts. Sorry but I think they were right to kill Napster, Napster was playing middle man for massive bootlegging across the world. You don't pay people to break the law by buying their company, you kill the company and make an example of them.

Bootlegging is an issue. Just because a company can remain profitable while people steal from it doesn't mean they and the cops shouldn't try to stop the theft. How much cheaper could the products be if MS was actually paid for all the copies of its software? How much higher the dividends to the stockholder? How many more employees? How much more R&D?

The internet distribution method that all the napterites worship WILL NOT WORK. It CANNOT be profitable for an artist. If it had any chance in the world of being profitable, somebody would be doing it already. There are bands trying it, they aren't having a lick of success. Why? No advertising engine, no distribution for the impulse buy, no radio play, none of the tools that actually sell music are available to them. Unless you have both a physical product that people can see in WalMart and the deep pockets necessary to feed that machine you aren't going to achieve the level of sales needed to be considered even a remote success.
136 posted on 06/29/2002 9:42:42 PM PDT by discostu
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To: discostu
Ah Apple the savior. Guess again. Apple is dead as a company with you. Their percentage of the market keeps dropping, the best way for them to get software to run on their system is to make their OS pretend to be everything. As for Jobs... who cares. He's a brilliant idea man and he's got less business than a bug. Notice Apple was stable at 7% until they brought back brilliant Stevie, now they're at 5.

Every PC user keeps saying Apple is dead or dying. Guess what, it hasn't happened. The PC market is consolidating now because it is having a hard time remaining profitable. How much profit can HPaq or Dell make on their typical systems? At my university, most of the PC users opt for the low end. You know what that means don't you... profits are lower and the users will still be expecting the same kind of tech support that people who opt for the high end hardware get. HPQ's future in the UNIX market is questionable and Dell has a terrible relationship with most Linux users because they feel gipped since Dell touted the RHLinux option on certain systems but made it quite difficult to find the part on the store that allowed you to buy them. A lot of Linux users are being converted to OSX becuase it just works as a desktop and its UNIX side lets us still be geeks. One of my best friends from high school and I are perfect examples. I know some other *NIX users that are warming up to OS X as well. If OSX can convert us, it can convert average joe blows who are sick and tired of the same old, same old from Redmond.

YES PALLADIUM ISN'T THE ANSWER, NEITHER IS FRITZ, NEITHER WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM. But guess what, they're what's coming down the pipe. Not just from companies from probably from the law. Unless somebody comes up with a better answer.

It isn't inevitable. The CBDTPA was shot in the head this year by DigitalConsumer.org's campaign against it. If you oppose it and haven't gone to their site, do it. They have a small letter they'll fax everyone who represents you on paper in Congress telling them you don't like it. If the CBDTPA comes around again, help DC.org get even more people to send the faxes out. They sent out 35,000 letters just this year during the few weeks where it was an issue!

It is not the government's place to make market transitions easy. If a business is outmoded or cannot work it must die. God help us if Enron is bailed out with tax payers' money. The solution is to find a way to get a company like Paypal to get their service integrated into AOL, Compuserve, Earthlink's software and everywhere that would attract consumer attention. That way people could send micropayments to artists. That is the solution. That and prosecuting users who mass-bootleg. Don't quibble over the meaning of mass-bootleg. Anyone that is sending a few gigs of 128-160k mp3s out a month falls into that category. DSL and Cable internet service providers have more than enough technical resources to flag users whose upstream hits that much or more in 1 month. Once they hit 500mb, start logging every outgoing connection and run it through a perl script to see what data was being sent. A friend of mine said that he could easily have done that when he was working at my school's unix lab.

How much cheaper could the products be if MS was actually paid for all the copies of its software?

It wouldn't be $.01 cheaper. The majority of Microsoft's markets aren't threatened by bootlegging. The corporate market and the OEM markets are its bread and butter. Corporate customers can face millions of dollars in legal damages if they don't pay up. People who get their Microsoft software from OEMs make up the other large market for their software. Those markets only get hit on a large scale if a shipment of bootlegs gets mixed up in an official OEM shipment or a corporate software reseller sells bootlegs to unwitting corporate clients.

How much higher the dividends to the stockholder?

What dividends from MSFT? The company just announced that they won't even consider dividends for their shareholders. Talk about shafting the shareholders. The company has $40B in its bank accounts and continues to build on that. They are richer than most financial institutions according to IIRC Business 2.0.

The internet distribution method that all the napterites worship WILL NOT WORK. It CANNOT be profitable for an artist. If it had any chance in the world of being profitable, somebody would be doing it already.

Except for one problem, it cannot be done legally since an artist cannot consent to the distribution. They aren't the copyright holder if they have signed with a label.

Unless you have both a physical product that people can see in WalMart and the deep pockets necessary to feed that machine you aren't going to achieve the level of sales needed to be considered even a remote success.

You are considered a failure if you don't sell at least 1M records. As a guy from the Juliana Theory said, you're considered a successful indie band if you can sell 100,000 copies. If you aren't a Pearl Jam, a Live, a Creed, a Korn or an Incubus, you cannot get very "successful" under the current model. A simplified paypal-liked system would do the trick. Who the hell is stingy enough to not send $1 for a few songs they like to an artist? Not many people. Before you get into a rant about publicizing the songs, take a look at the success of the Blaire Witch Project.

137 posted on 06/29/2002 10:37:01 PM PDT by dheretic
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To: discostu
Ah Apple the savior. Guess again. Apple is dead as a company with you.

One would think that after twenty-one solid years of making this argument every single day and never having it come anywhere close to true, the Apple-bashers would get the hint.

138 posted on 06/29/2002 10:43:30 PM PDT by Timesink
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To: dheretic
Apple is more in danger from shrinking shares than anybody else because they stand alone in their standards. If HP or Dell falls apart that doesn't hurt the PC market as a whole because more than like that percentage is just shifting from one brand of WIntel to another. If Apple loses market it's going from non-WIntel to WIntel. The fact is Apple's market percentage would be great if they weren't a seperate platform with it's own set of standards and a seperate need for software. Unfortunately it is. As for conversions we'll watch the percentage. A lot of those things were cheared before, and the number went down. One of the biggest business sins Apple does is that they spend a lot of time and money preaching to the choir. The keep making their computers more Maccy, which the Apple fans love and they just gobble it up, but that moves them further away from the desktop market and a more dramatic conversion for people leaving PCs. That's how they get huge sales and a shrinking percentage.

This isn't a market transition this is piracy and bootlegging. There's a difference between MP3s circulated legitimately and illegal distribution. Stay on target. What's going to bring the government into this is the bootlegging, it's against the law, that makes it the governments business. Even if there is a market transition to this MP3 crap that still has no bearing on the illegal bootlegging.

Why are you so addicted to paypal? It's cut, my wife uses it, but it's strength is in allowing individuals to do online transactions as seller or buyer. If you're gong to be an incorporated body driving real money through your system fork over the vendor fees to Visa and Mastercard and do it right. Signing on to those costs more, but the vendor gets tons of fraud protection for those extra fees.

You're dodging the point. Just because MS has money doesn't mean they shouldn't try to thwart illegal distribution of their software. I know rich companies aren't popular but the fact is that software piracy is illegal and it doesn't become less illegal to pirate it because the maker is MS.

You need to restudy the music industry. Only a dozen or so artists a year sell 1 million records, they're the top dogs. Maybe three times that many go gold (500 thousand). The judgment for successful is does the album pay for itself. The CD is advertising for the tour, that's where bands make their money. But the CD doesn't push the tour if somebody isn't pushing the CD, that's where the music company comes in. There are plenty of bands out there trying your model right now, they can do it because they haven't sold to a record company. They're doing the raw form, straight out through the internet in MP3s and home printed CDs. None of the ones I've run into have quit their day jobs. The model doesn't work. The internet is too big and not omnipresent enough. What makes the current model work is that somebody who doesn't track band X (they like them but they don't follow the music press, which is 95% of the fans out there) is walking buy the music store in the mall peaks in and sees a poster advertising band X's new album. They wander in, they buy it the clerk mentions the tour is coming here they go, walla. Any model that doesn't allow the casual fan to stumble upon the new album and the tour info while going through their daily lives won't work. It's not now it won't later.

I'm glad you pointed out BWP. Why did BWP succeed? Because it had a 2 year advertising campaign. They were plugging the hell out of that thing forever in every way imaginable. And what happened? Well eventually their independant advertising got the attention of some of the right people and they got invited into festival circuit, where they got connected with even more right people, and then a major movie company bought the rights, kicked the advertising into even higher gear, did the mass production, ran it through the well established distribution network, and walla, an "indy movie" success story. BWP isn't a success if they don't get the deep pockets. Dozens of indie movies a year hit the festivals and end their shelf life there, many more never even get to that.
139 posted on 06/30/2002 12:32:32 AM PDT by discostu
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To: Timesink
I hear just as often from the Macheads that "they're about to break through and crush WIntel." This was a stalemate argument for a long time because Mac was solidly sitting at 7% of the market. Now they're at 5%. We'll see.
140 posted on 06/30/2002 12:34:48 AM PDT by discostu
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